


Jeremy Bearimy, Baby

by zedpm



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Character of Color, Character Study, Episode Tag, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Third Person Limited, Present Tense, Romance, a kant reference bc it’s chidi pov... our boy loves him some kant!, aka the entire show, i wrote this entire thing while listening to lizzo lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21549586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zedpm/pseuds/zedpm
Summary: “This is your soulmate,” Michael had said, and said, and said again. He’d been right the first time.Episode tag for S4E9, “The Answer.”
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	Jeremy Bearimy, Baby

**Author's Note:**

> so uhhhh... “the answer” hit me like a ton of bricks lmao
> 
> hope you enjoy!

_There is no “Answer”_

_But Eleanor is the Answer_

Eleanor’s smile is like a sunrise caught in amber. Chidi grins back, and for a crystalline instant, whatever new terror they’re facing doesn’t matter at all. Eleanor is here, and Eleanor is his. Chidi gets to be hers.

_ Eleanor’s going to save the forking universe, _he thinks.

And then: _ No. _ We _ are. _

All their afterlives, the idea had been that Chidi would try to make Eleanor better, and he would fail. But in typical Shellstrop fashion, she’d turned that bullshirt prescription inside out; Eleanor had not only succeeded, she’d made Chidi better, over and over, until the person he’d died as barely resembled the person he’s become. 

“In a good way,” he tells Eleanor, during one of their self-reflection sessions, after the universe has once again not ended. Their fight isn’t over, because it never is; but Chidi knows that whatever happens, they’ll deal. They have each other—the rest of the universe doesn’t stand a chance. They’ll bombard it with love, and love will win. It always does.

Eleanor touches his knee. Her skin glows with a suffusion of golden sunlight. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “I think you’re still you, you know? Just a you that isn’t terrified. A you that’s a little more zen.”

“A _ lot _ more zen,” Chidi says. 

Eleanor laughs. “Yeah. And you _ did _make me better. It just turns out that helping helps the helper.” She scrunches up her nose. “Christ, that doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.”

Chidi kisses her nose. “That tracks,” he says. “The universe is pretty nonsensical, after all.”

They’re a love story in reverse, the world’s cheesiest romance chopped and screwed beyond comprehensibility. Chidi wonders at it, or has the memory of doing so—for all that he’d spent the majority of his existence desperate for answers, when Eleanor had been part of his existence, the answers provided to him felt fallow.

“This is your soulmate,” Michael had said, and said, and said again. He’d been right the first time. Eleanor is the best thing that ever happened to him, and not in a reductive romance-novel kind of way. He wasn’t incomplete without her, but he wasn’t who he could have been, either. Eleanor saved him, and there’s nothing dramatic about that at all. It’s simply reality, or whatever passes for reality in a universe where bureaucracy governs fate and time-knives slice through physics like arteries. 

Seeing Eleanor try changed him, and it still changes him—all of them do. He’s watched Jason’s optimism merge with his kindness to make a person who would do anything for people he loves; Tahani grow from an insecure socialite who protected herself by lashing out to a woman who epitomized kindness; Janet develop emotions and use them from the outset for love. He helped Michael metamorphose from a literal demon to a being who would sacrifice himself for justice. They make themselves better every day, and it makes Chidi want to make himself better too.

And he’s watched Eleanor. He’s seen Eleanor transform, over and over, from a self-absorbed Arizona trash bag to the most extraordinary person Chidi’s ever known. The spark was always there—she just had to decide to care, and once she did, it was impossible for her to stop. How could he do anything other than love her? 

Chidi’s really glad the universe didn’t give him a choice about that one.

There’s truth, but there isn’t Truth. The capital letter is an incitement, a declaration of universality that—Chidi’s learned—covers up existence’s actuality: it’s messy and beautiful and unsolvable and, sometimes, startlingly cruel. But cruelty isn’t a Truth Chidi is willing to accept anymore. He’ll tear the world down before he lets it crumble.

Eleanor taught him that, too.

They review the experiment’s failure, later, when they have the luxury of dissecting minutiae. It hits Tahani the hardest. “Can human beings only get better in the face of cruelty?” she moans, in magnificently melodramatic Tahani fashion.

“We all want to be good,” Eleanor says. “It’s just hard when you think you don’t have any more work to do.” She snuggles deeper into Chidi’s side. Chidi smiles down at her. “Or that it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, dog,” Jason says. “How are you supposed to learn something that you don’t know you need to learn?”

“I suppose,” Tahani says, drawing out the word. “I just—must there be pain, for there to be beauty?”

There’s a beat, and then they’re all laughing. “Must there be pain?” Eleanor wails, clutching her face. Jason snorts Mountain Dew out of his nose, and Janet vanishes it from her dress with an entirely incomprehensible patient grace. “For there—to be—_beauty?” _

“Yes, alright,” Tahani sniffs. “I take your point, and reiterate mine. Why does self-improvement come at such a steep price?”

“Everything does,” Michael says. “That’s just life.” He tilts his head. “That’s just death?” He looks to Janet, who shrugs. “That’s how it is. There’s a reason we made a Bad Place.” He blanches. “Even if it was a really bad call.”

“Meaning is made,” Janet says. “You can’t make something from nothing.” She summons a cactus and grins. “Unless you’re me!”

“Anyway,” Chidi says. “It doesn’t always have to be painful. But if it does—in the long run, that pain is worth it. Don’t you think?”

The universe is nonsensical and directionless and malevolent and magnificent, and it brought him Eleanor. Chidi’s duty has never been clearer, even without a categorical imperative. There are billions of people out there learning the same things he’s learned, or who ought to have the chance. Chidi had gotten one; they should, too. 

The value of a life can’t be reduced to a point total, because the value of life is in living it. That doesn’t stop with death. Nothing does, really.

“What do we do?” Michael asks, his voice a panicked rush. He tugs at his bow tie.

Chidi doesn’t let Michael’s terror overwhelm him. He just looks at Eleanor, and offers her his hand. She takes it, and it really was worth all of this, for her hand in his, for the way her smile paints every future they might get to live. 

“We do what we’ve always done,” he says. “We try.”


End file.
